Cheaper for reception venue: All-inclusive hotel or a la carte?

Depends on how much control you want. All-inclusive, they usually choose all your vendors and you just show up.

Ala carte, you are in charge.

Money-wise, it can go either way. Look at a list of what the all-inclusive is offering; then compare to prices if you do it ala carte (look at vendor's websites for prices). It's worth the time to do the investigating.

If you don't want to be bothered with details, either do the all-inclusive with a venue, or, like me, some wedding planners are doing all-inclusives. You might want to see if any are also offering this service.

One note on pricing: make sure any gratuities and taxes are included in the pricing. Food is the most common one I notice a 25% add on for 'tax and tip' (whether the gratuity ever reaches the staff is another thing).

The only point I can suggest is to read the fine print. Our venue offered two packages, or an a la carte. The packages included a 20% gratuity and service fee, as well as the cake cutting fee. To make sure that we were saving money, we added up everything we'd get with the package we selected, as if it was an a la carte selection. Doing it a la carte was $2000 more. In our case, the a la carte would only save you money if you really limited choices (e.g. 1 entree selection, no passed appetizers, 1 cheese or fruit station).

It was a full bar. Alcohol was the one thing we weren't allowed to bring from outside.